Music 262: Rock Music, History and Social Analysis, Teen Idols [Music
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Music 262: Rock Music, History and Social Analysis, Teen Idols [Music Playing on Piano] [Brian Ward]: So I keep mentioning over and over 1959, February 3rd, the death of Buddy Holly as being a turning point in rock n’ roll and it really was. After that, people thought that rock n’ roll had just been a passing fad and new music was coming along. Until The Beatles came along rock n’ roll really wasn’t revived. A lot of what was happening on the big charts came out of New York City. What happens with any youth movement is that big business comes in there and they see the opportunity for money to be made and they take over. This is what happened after 1959 up until about 1964 with all of the popular music in the United States. On the top charts we have Lawrence Welk, Bobby Vinton. Volare the song became number one. This is definitely not rock n’ roll. A lot of easy listening, bubble gum pop songs that took over the airwaves on the radio. A big part of that was this machine in New York. This machine was The Brill Building. In The Brill Building they had these cubicles of songwriters. They would tell these songwriters, hey we need a hit song, write a song about this. They would tell maybe two or three other songwriting teams to write the same song. They would compete against each other. At the end of the day they would see who had the best one and who would be picked. They would produce that song in the same building. They would go upstairs; record it in the recording studio. They had the musicians there. They had the songwriting and licensing companies there. They had the record companies there and it’s all in the same building. So it was actually an industry, a machine of writing hit songs that stuck to a certain formula. Young America was bought and it was sold. That is what happened during this time. Bobby Velline was chosen to sing a tribute to Buddy Holly and he became a very famous teen idol. Another famous teen idol was Frankie Avalon. Another guy was Fabian. They were touring all on the same tour. They would record songs written for them in The Brill Building. The most successful teen idol of the period was Bobby Vinton. He sang a lot of hit songs. He had a smooth voice. So songs like Roses are Red My Love, Blue Velvet, There I Said it Again were all real big hits prior to The Beatles. In fact, The Beatles, I Want to Hold Your Hand knocked his There I Said it Again off the charts and started a new era in 1964. So the United States turned to these top 40 radio formats. The top 40 radio format, we’re all familiar with now, but that was something new back then. The radio station would play songs only from the top 40 Billboard charts. They would rotate the same 40 songs over and over again. If the song got on the chart, it got on the radio play. If it fell off the chart, it fell off the radio play. So this playlist kind of created this demand for money. From that came this practice in the industry known as “payola”. Now payola is when a record company or an artist pays the disc jockey to play their song or a radio station to put a song on their playlist. They will pay them cash. They will buy them a car. They will do whatever it takes to get their song on the radio because they know that’s the way that they can sell records. Payola became a big scandal at one point. There was a guy named Alan Freed who kind of took the hit for everyone else because it 1 was an industry standard (and still is) to do this practice of paying to have your songs played on the radio. During this Brill Building era, the songwriters dominated the charts, not really the artists. These songwriting teams became successful in their own right and they became known for writing great songs and from that grew this whole teen idol period. Aldon Music Publishing is the name of the publishing company, the main one in The Brill Building that produced all of these hits. They formed in 1958 by Al Nevins and Don Kirshner. They put together songwriting teams. Leiber and Stoller really started them out, getting some hit songs. Pop singers rarely wrote their own music during this period. The songwriters were always in pairs. One would write the music, one would write the lyrics. Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield were a songwriting team from The Brill Building. They wrote a ton of hits for Neil. Neil Sedaka was also one of the teen idols. So because they were writing the songs for this one guy, their songs were less varied. They stuck to a certain formula if you listen to the music of Neil Sedaka, it’s really bubblegum pop. It’s well- crafted, great songwriting, but there’s really not a whole lot of teeth to the music at all. The most prolific hit makers from Aldon Publishing were a man and woman team, Gerry Goffin and Carole King. They became the most prolific hit makers at Aldon. They wrote about teen romance, popular subjects. They put these romances in these urban landscapes and they kind of rose above the cliché written formulas and wrote some great songs. Their first big hit was Will You Love Me Tomorrow? Another big hit they wrote was Up on the Roof. They had a lot of variety. They had a lot of ability to change with the times. The times were changing really fast so they kept up with all the up-to-date changes in the style of music and that kept them in the business. Carole King went on to have a whole career as a solo artist herself in the 1970s and had a hit album called Tapestry in 1971. The city that was most known for this teen idol period was Philadelphia. In Philadelphia you had a lot of these guys, especially all of the Bobbies: Bobby Velline, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Darin. They all came from Philadelphia. Usually young, Italian Americans (Fabian) that were being produced from the city of Philadelphia. They had a machine there in the industry called American Bandstand. American Bandstand with Dick Clark. Now Dick Clark was one of those guys who were implicated in the payola scandal. The difference between Dick Clark and Alan Freed was that he copped to it. He said you know what? I did it. It was wrong. I’m not going to do it anymore. People forgave him. He kept having a career and he went on. We all know Dick Clark from the New Year’s Eve specials. He really created this machine where they would put these young pop stars on his show and it would get seen by everyone in America on American Bandstand. Then from there, they could have a hit record very easily because they had the exposure that they needed. That was the engine of the teen idol machine, American Bandstand. The songs were written in New York in The Brill Building. That’s what was happening on the airwaves of America during this dark period between 1959 and 1964. 2 .